


sente.

by TittyAlways



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: 1984 - George Orwell - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 10:44:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11507766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TittyAlways/pseuds/TittyAlways
Summary: He woke up with a dream on his lips, and the memory of a night that never will have happened. Allen re-wrote truths every day, to make them more truthful. Someone else would have to do that job now. Someone else would have to re-write him, and make it so he never existed.That was just how these things went.





	sente.

The telescreen issued a shrill, piercing whistle at zero seven-fifteen and Allen found himself to be awake without much ceremony. He hadn’t been dreaming, that he knew of, but he stayed there for several seconds without bothering to open his eyes, chasing the tail end of a thought he couldn’t quite remember. Something unorthodoxy, no doubt. Such thoughts always were, he reflected as the telescreen alarm shut off and the regulated program of propaganda resumed. The thoughts that came in sleep.

Dreams weren’t always vivid and sequential.

Allen opened his eyes to the dingy bare concrete wall of his flat and considered that he shouldn’t be quite so disappointed. Pushed himself up to sit and indulged a few moments in rubbing at his eyes, itchy and blurry with sleep. Tried to swallow down the dryness at the back of his throat. That was what he got for indulgence. Drinking gin he couldn’t afford, smoking his hundred grams of tobacco in one night like it wasn’t rationed. Beer too, he recalled while he hazily tugged the thin blanket away from his legs and swung them stiffly off the narrow mattress.

He stopped there, fingers curled around the edge of the bed. Head angled down slightly so the telescreen wouldn’t be able to catch his expression when it flittered from vapid contentment to sleep-tempered confusion. He swallowed again, but that spot at the back of his throat stayed tacky and dry. What an odd thought. What a strange, strange dream. Allen’s tongue darted out to wet his chapped lips and he fixed his face, lifted his head and pushed himself to stand, for a moment unsteady. He was taking too long, he knew. The Physical Jerks would begin in a couple of minutes and he didn’t even have pants.

Hurrying to tug on loose sweats and a singlet from off the floor, Allen found his hands and all the way up his forearms felt weak and shaky and a little bit cold. His stomach clenched, empty of anything but the remaining vapours of alcohol, and his legs seemed to need a few moments to adjust to being vertical.

“Twenty to thirty group!” barked a sharp voice from the telescreen, and Allen forced himself to shake off the unsteadiness his night had left in him. Straightened his shoulders. Took his place in front of the telescreen. “Arms bending and stretching!” the man commanded, “Take your time, by me. _One,_ two, three, four!…”

Methodically, mechanically, Allen followed the exercises. The Physical Jerks weren’t particularly engaging, and it was easy to let his mind wander. Easier, certainly, than it should have been. For _anyone_ in the Order - not just Allen particularly. Though, he allowed somewhat bitterly while keeping his expression set as one of mild enjoyment, he had always had a bit of an inclination towards thoughtcrime.

Did anyone else have those dreams, he wondered while he stretched his arms across his chest. Dreams without image or story or situation. Did anyone else wake up with thoughtcrime on their lips, an inch from being spoken aloud? It wasn’t a matter of saying it. No-one got vaporised for _speechcrime._ No-one was dumb enough. Not even idiots like him. Allen stared plainly through the telescreen as he worked, reaching his arms over behind his back. He probably wasn’t going to get vaporised. Not at this point.

A public execution was far more likely.

It was like a farewell, right? Doing something he might actually enjoy for once in his twenty-two years. Better than just thinking about it and getting killed for _that._ Allen blinked at the telescreen. He was still smiling, for some reason. Habit, probably. That was how this whole system worked, wasn’t it? Regimented to the minute, making it so that looking mildly pleased was an unconscious habit.

He considered dropping the smile. He _wanted_ to drop the smile.

He didn’t.

Some vain hope, perhaps, that maybe if he kept pretending to be a good, mindless, orthodoxy cog, the Order might decide he was clever enough at pretending to let him keep doing it. Some ridiculous instinct pleading against the Thought Police.

Allen smiled, and reached down to touch his toes. His lower back twinged, and for a moment the smile was genuine. He stood straight and stretched his arms up, reached his fingers towards the drab ceiling. His stomach gurgled as the stretch pulled his abdomen taut and he smiled because he _meant_ it. Beer, despite that he was sure it probably wasn’t meant to taste anything like how it had, was wonderful. Nothing at all like the oil-and-rotted-rice flavour of the standard-issue gin the Order members were allowed to drink. It was made to be sipped, and the bubbles had left him feeling full in a way he’d never quite experienced before. Allen didn’t think he’d ever burped such as he had last night, and the thought almost brought a laugh spilling over his lips.

He bit it back, choked it down. Grinned past the telescreen and planted his hands on his hips, gyrated his body from the waist as instructed and let his mind wander down the path of that ache in his back.

Standard-issue smoke on his lips, beer on his tongue and laughter bubbling in his chest. Joviality like he didn’t know could exist, and music like he’d never heard. Nothing nothing _nothing_ like anything that would have been sanctioned by the Order. It was raw and natural and so completely beyond the harshly regimented control of the government that Allen hadn’t even known something like that could exist. That something like that night could be had.

It had gone on and on and on, later and later, moods shifting and changing as Allen got drunker and drunker with the proles. And there was a man there, amongst those lower class sub-citizens. A man with a smile that Allen couldn’t help but return, a man with long hair and toffee-brown skin and cigarettes that tasted nothing at all like the dry, stringy leaves of Allen’s ration.

He hadn’t liked Allen, it wasn’t hard to tell. He hadn’t liked that Allen was there, drinking and smoking with the proles. He hadn't liked the uniform, or the deep-set weariness that had grown into Allen's bones. But for everything he hadn’t liked he had a contradictory, almost savage love. Or, perhaps love wasn’t the right word.

_Lust._

He’d run the narrow red sash through his fingers, the one Allen tied around his waist out of habit. “What’s this for?” he’d asked, his smile teasing and sharp around the edges. He’d liked Allen’s expression then, Allen knew by the way he curled the end of the sash around his fist. He’d liked Allen’s cutting grin, his bitterly ironic amusement.

“I’m part of the Junior Anti-Sex League, you know,” Allen had responded, and brought his crumbling cigarette to his lips. Spoke in swirled smoke, not knowing what he wanted but knowing that he wanted it. “Desire is unorthodoxy, and sex should have nothing to do with pleasure.”

Allen licked his lips again, dry from dehydration and friction. He wasn’t certain of the sequence of events, but when he’d kissed that man it had been with everything he’d been told he shouldn’t have in him.

Lust, desire, pleasure. Hunger and need and indulgence, and everything that red sash represented when the man’s labour-rough hands tore it from his waist.

And the way it had _felt,_ to have that emblem of propriety and restriction removed. Removed by hands that didn’t hate him, but hated everything he represented. Allen _hated_ it. That was why he’d been there, wasn’t it? That was why he’d given himself in to the indulgence. That’s why he’d asked that man, with coy actions and roundabout flirtations, to strip him of it. He _hated_ it.

The idealism, the pretentious _efficiency_ of the Order. The falsity, the hollowness, the scaffold of corruption and contradiction that built up the government - the government that controlled, with impunity, their perception of truth and through that the reality of the world they lived in. If there was nothing to prove it wasn’t so, who’s to say it was?

Sex was shameful, disgusting, bland, pleasureless, unfeeling. A necessary evil, and one that you were to regard with vague disgust and an unimpressed air. Who’s to say it wasn’t so?

That man. That man with his rough hands and hateful smiles, and the brutal efficiency with which he had stripped Allen of the Order’s propriety. The kisses he’d laid on Allen’s body, something like tender once he’d been stripped from a Minitrue husk - once he was just a man.

Music like Allen had never heard, conversation like Allen had never thought, beer like he’d never tasted and tobacco like he’d never smoked. Hedonism, and a lust for life that he’d never known could exist in him. He’d gone there because he knew he was dying, and all he’d found was a hunger to keep living.

Not like this.

Not stretching in front of a telescreen because he had to, not taping a smile to his face because anything else would get him killed. Not spending each day falsifying truths that were only true because the Order said they were, not denouncing any single thing that might touch him with _happiness_. Not having two minutes set aside each day for the sole purpose of reimpressioning a hate he didn’t understand on an ideology he’d never been afforded the opportunity to consider.

How ridiculous was it, really? Things couldn’t always have been like this, but the Order had destroyed any evidence otherwise. The lie only existed in his mind. Last night only existed in his memories. It didn’t exist, and it never had. There _was_ no music like that, there was no joy but what came from serving the Order. There were no men with hateful smiles who would strip you of your falsified misunderstanding of _humanity_.

Allen’s hands fell limp to his sides and he stared through the telescreen, the Physical Jerks ended. The trainer disappeared from the screen, and a long, shrill whistle sounded before the regulated propaganda began playing once more.

He was meant to go to work.

That sound meant he had to put on his blue denim overalls and tie that red sash around his waist, march to his cubicle in the Ministry of Truth and correct the past to agree with the present.

Allen stayed there for a long moment, the smile gone from his face. A public execution was laughable. He wasn’t going to be hanged. He wasn’t an example. He was a blip, an error. He was just another piece of the past which ought to be corrected. Allen blinked at the telescreen and swallowed against that stinging dry spot at the back of his throat. It’d grown during the Physical Jerks.

Allen turned on his heel and went to the cupboard. Poured what was left of the standard-issue gin into a rough ceramic cup and took a steadying breath before shotting it back. He grimaced at the taste, coughed a little, and pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. Looked in the cupboard, behind where the bottle had stood.

There was a cigarette there, rolled tight with thick white paper and stuffed full of golden-brown tobacco.

Tyki.

His name had been Tyki. Allen remembered the sound of it carving out that dry spot at the back of his throat. He swallowed thickly, but the gin had done nothing to soothe the coarse ache.

“I’m going to die tomorrow,” he’d said while he smoked his last cigarette, staring at the dirty ceiling. Laying on his back, tangled in overwarm sheets.

“That’s a shame,” Tyki had said, and gave Allen one from his pack.

Allen delicately picked up the fine cigarette from the unfinished wood of the cupboard, held it carefully - the way he was used to handling those flimsy, loose standard-issues the Order rationed out. Tucked it between his lips and went to the narrow, rickety window. Swiped the box of unreliable matches from the table as he passed.

The telescreen mumbled on and on about war and peace and freedom and prosperity behind him, and he knew he was in plain sight of it now.

He struck three matches before one of them caught, and cupped his hand around the narrow flame while he brought it to the crisp end of the rich, white roll. Flicked the burning matchstick out onto the street and brought his fingers to his lips while he pulled at the cigarette.

The smoke was thick and cloying, choking and humid and hot. It slipped from his lips like a heavy cloud, and Allen watched the light breeze from the window ruffle and disperse it.

“Walker,” someone interrupted the droning of the regulated program through the telescreen. “Walker, A. 5014. The Order does not reward tardiness.”

Allen glanced over his shoulder, saw the image of a severe-looking man with a sharp undercut, sharp eyes, sharp suit and an old-style moustache. Allen brought Tyki’s cigarette to his lips and pulled at it, didn’t say a word.

“Walker, I insist that you make the march immediately.”

Allen turned back to the window, leaned his elbows down on the sill. There was an Order-issue van pulling up in the street outside his building, and he smiled wry and bitterly amused. Moustache couldn’t have called them that quick. They’d known, of course. They knew as intimately as Allen did. They were the _Thought_ Police, after all.

“Walker, this is your final warning.”

Allen had woken up with a dream on his lips. He blew the smoke past them, remembered the hot slide of Tyki’s mouth against his. Ashed the cigarette out the window and turned to face the telescreen. “I’m sorry, sir,” he fixed that premeditated expression of contentment on his face, “but I’m afraid I won’t be able to make the march today.”

The man’s sharp expression darkened into something terrible, but Allen could hear them coming down the hall anyway. Brought the cigarette to his lips for one last drag. It was a shame, really, that he only got to smoke half of it.

He’d woken up to a dream, and to words Tyki had written into the skin of a man who will never have existed.

                            WAR IS PEACE

                   IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

                      FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

“I think,” he murmured, smoke spilling from his lips to give shape to his thoughtcrime, “I’d rather be enslaved.”


End file.
